A blog set out to explore, archive & relate plastic pollution happening world-wide, while learning about on-going efforts and solutions to help break free of our addiction to single-use plastics & sharing this awareness with a community of clean water lovers everywhere!

A
new world: Plastic debris in the ocean has spawned a ‘plastisphere’ of
organisms that scientists fear may send ripples through the marine
ecosystem.

An ecosystem of mankind’s own making could pose an ecological threat.Elizabeth Lopez manoeuvred a massive steel claw over the side of a
45m sailboat and guided its descent through swaying kelp and schools of
fish 16km off the coast of San Diego, California.

She was hoping to
catch pieces of a mysterious marine ecosystem that scientists are
calling the “plastisphere”.

It starts with particles of degraded plastic no bigger than grains
of salt. Bacteria take up residence on those tiny pieces of trash. Then
single-celled animals feed on the bacteria, and larger predators feed on
them.

“We’ve created a new man-made ecosystem of plastic debris,” said
Lopez, a graduate student at the University of San Diego, during the
recent expedition.

The plastisphere was six decades in the making. It’s a product of
the discarded plastic – shopping bags, flipflops, margarine tubs, toys,
toothbrushes – that gets swept from urban sewer systems and river
channels into the sea.

Degraded plastic bags that have washed
ashore in Sekincan, Selangor. A new man-made ecosystem of plastic debris
is taking shape in the sea.

When that debris washes into the ocean, it breaks down into bits
that are colonised by microscopic organisms that scientists are just
beginning to understand.

Researchers suspect that some of the denizens
may be pathogens hitching long-distance rides on floating junk.
Scientists also fear that creatures in the plastisphere break down
chunks of polyethylene and polypropylene so completely that dangerous
chemicals percolate into the environment.

“This is an issue of great concern,” said Tracy Mincer, a marine
geochemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.

“Microbes may be greatly accelerating the weathering of plastic debris
into finer bits. If so, we aren’t sure how zooplankton and other small
creatures are responding to that, or whether harmful additives,
pigments, plasticisers, flame retardants and other toxic compounds are
leaching into the water.”

Planet Plastic
About 245 million tonnes of plastic is produced annually around the
world, according to industry estimates. That represents 31.5kg of
plastic annually for each of the 7.1 billion people on the planet,
scientists say.

The waste gathers in vast oval-shaped ocean “garbage patches” formed
by converging currents and winds. Once trapped in these cyclonic dead
zones, plastic particles may persist for centuries.

The physiological
effects of visible plastic debris on the fish, birds, turtles and marine
mammals that ingest it are well-documented: clogged intestines,
suffocation, loss of vital nutrients, starvation. The effects of the
minuscule pieces that make up the plastisphere are only beginning to be
understood.

Edward Carpenter, a professor of microbial ecology at San Francisco
State University, first reported that microbes could attach themselves
to plastic particles adrift at sea in 1972.

He observed that these
particles enabled the growth of algae and probably bacteria and
speculated that hazardous chemicals showing up in ocean animals may have
leached out of bits of plastic.

Carpenter’s discovery went largely unnoticed for decades. But now,
the scientific effort to understand how the plastisphere influences the
ocean environment has become a vibrant and growing field of study.

From
Woods Hole to the University of Hawaii, scientists are collecting
seawater and marine life so they can analyse the types, sizes and
chemical compositions of the plastic fragments they contain. Their
findings are shedding new light on the ramifications of humanity’s
addiction to plastic.

A fine mesh net called a neuston net collects samples of animal and plant life at the sea surface as it is towed.

“We’re changing the basic rhythms of life in the world’s oceans, and
we need to understand the consequences of that,” said marine biologist
Miriam Goldstein, who earned her doctorate at University of California
San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography by studying plastic
debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch between Hawaii and California.

In October, Goldstein and oceanographer Deb Goodwin of the Sea
Education Association in Woods Hole reported that one-third of the
gooseneck barnacles they collected from the garbage patch had plastic
particles in their guts. The typical fragment measured 1.4mm across, not
much bigger than a piece of glitter, according to their report in the
journal PeerJ.

Some of the barnacles had bits of plastic in their faecal pellets
too. That finding led Goldstein to speculate that some of the 256
barnacles that were plastic-free when they were captured by researchers
had probably eaten plastic at some point in their lives but cleared it
from their systems. Since crabs prey on barnacles, the plastic the
barnacles eat may be spreading through the food web, Goldstein and
Goodwin reported.

Fish that ingest plastic debris tend to accumulate hazardous
substances in their bodies and suffer from liver toxicity, according to a
study published in the journal Scientific Reports. Not only was the plastic itself dangerous, so too were the toxic chemicals the plastic had absorbed.

The plastisphere isn’t limited to oceans. In 2012, a team of
researchers discovered microplastic pollution in the Great Lakes –
including high volumes of polyethylene and polypropylene “microbeads”
used in facial cleansers.

Other scientists, including Mincer of the Woods Hole institution and
microbial ecologist Erik Zettler of the Sea Education Association,
spent three years coming up with the first comprehensive description of
microbial communities that colonise plastic marine debris.

The researchers used fine-scale nets to skim plastic particles from
more than 100 locations in the Atlantic Ocean, from Massachusetts to the
Caribbean Sea. Using scanning electron microscopes and gene-sequencing
techniques, they identified more than 1,000 different types of bacteria
and algae attached to seaborne plastic, according to their report in
June in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Of particular concern was a sample of polypropylene not much larger
than the head of a pin. Its surface was dominated by members of the
genus Vibrio, which includes the bacteria that cause cholera and other gastrointestinal ailments.

In a research on the effects of plastic
waste, students from the University of San Diego use tweezers and a
spoon to gather specimens of weathered plastic retrieved from the sea.

These potential pathogens could travel long distances by attaching
themselves to plastic debris that persists in the ocean much longer than
biodegradable flotsam like feathers and wood.

The team is now comparing microbial communities on plastic debris
collected in the North Pacific and North Atlantic oceans, trying to
understand the bacteria that feed on their waste products, and predators
that feed on all of them.

“Each one of these plastic bits is a circle of life – one microbe’s
waste is another microbe’s dinner,” Mincer said. “We want to know more
about how some microbes may be hanging out on plastic trash, just
waiting to be eaten by fish so they can get into that environment.”

Meanwhile, in San Diego, Lopez and her colleagues are examining the
samples they collected under powerful microscopes and removing tiny bits
of plastic for classification and chemical analysis.

Their findings will be shared with the Southern California Coastal
Water Research Project, a public research institute that monitors urban
pollution.

“These microplastic worlds right under our noses are the next ocean
frontier,” said Drew Talley, a marine scientist at the University of San
Diego.

“It would be a crime not to investigate the damage they might be
doing to the oceans and to humans. – Los Angeles Times/McClatchy Tribube
Information Services

N.J. Still Considering Bill to Impose Fee for Disposable Bags

Hawaii’s
big island began a ban last week on plastic bags at all grocery stores,
restaurants and retailers, a step the state says it has taken to reduce
or eliminate the environmentally detrimental presence of this
single-use item. Kauai and Maui already enforced the ban, with Oahu set
to follow suit in 2015. A fee for paper bags could be on the horizon,
pushing consumers to rely primarily on eco-friendly reusable bags.

“Being a marine state,
perhaps, we are exposed more directly to the impacts of plastic
pollution and the damage it does to our environment,” Robert Harris,
director of the Sierra Club’s Hawaii chapter, said prior to the enacting
of the Plastic Bag Reduction Ordinance. “People in Hawaii are more
likely to be in the water or in the outdoors and see the modern day
tumbleweed – plastic bags – in the environment.”

Honolulu Mayor Peter Carlisle called the effort “groundbreaking.

“By signing this
environmentally friendly bill … Hawaii has become the only state in the
United States where every county has plastic bag legislation.”

As explained on the website
for the County of Hawaii Department of Environmental Management,
hawaiizerowaste.org, the reasoning behind the law is focused on the
environmental harm plastic bags cause.

The bags can entangle or choke
fish, turtles, birds and other animals that mistake them for food; they
contribute to litter and “are not consistent with the county’s goal to
reduce the quantity of materials going into the landfills”; and they
leach potentially toxic chemicals while degrading.

“A high-quality reusable
bag has the potential to replace over 600 single-use plastic bags over
its lifetime,” the website notes, adding, “Paper bags are not a good
alternative. It takes 14 million trees each year in the United States to
produce a year’s supply of paper bags for retail use. Reusable bags
reduce litter and conserve natural resources; making them the best
choice!”

The ordinance does allows
plastic bags for items such as meat, fish, nuts, grains, fresh produce,
small hardware, garments and prescription drugs.

Erich Wida, who grew up on
Long Beach Island and now lives on Oahu, said his children have learned
about the ban in school, even though it hasn’t yet been enforced on that
island. “I see a push at the schools for sure on awareness of plastic in the ocean. I see very little plastic in the ocean here also.”

His wife, Katie Dean Wida, said plastic bags are also taken as part of their recycling pickup.

“It will be tough to implement (the ban) on Oahu due to its size of population,” Erich believes, “but you never know.”

Though Hawaii’s is the only
statewide ban in the country, other places – San Francisco, Los
Angeles, coastal North Carolina – have outlawed plastic bags as well,
and a few states are currently considering single-use plastic bag bans
or fees, or both.

In New Jersey – where there is no shortage of coastline and waterways,and
plastic bags comprise a large portion of marine litter – a bill called
the Carryout Bag Reduction and Recycling Act was approved by the state’s
Senate Environment and Energy Committee in December 2012, but has not
moved since.

The bill seeks to reduce
the use of paper and plastic bags at supermarkets and retail
establishments, keeping them out of the environment and the waste
stream. The measure would require stores to impose a 5-cent fee per bag
for the use of disposable carryout bags, allow stores to provide a
5-cent credit for each bag provided by a customer, and require all
single-use carryout bags provided by stores to be recyclable by Jan. 1,
2015.

At the time the legislation
was under review by the Environment and Energy Committee, local
nonprofit Alliance for a Living Ocean described the measure as a double
environmental win, because in addition to helping decrease the use of
plastic and paper bags, the bill would generate funds to clean the local
watershed, as money raised by the fee would go toward protecting
Barnegat Bay.

“This bill makes so much
sense, especially for our area,” said Chris Huch, the executive director
of ALO at that time. “This bill will work to reduce plastic bag
consumption by establishing a tax on plastic bags. That money would go
straight into a fund set up by the state to improve water quality in
Barnegat Bay.

This will encourage people to bring reusable bags AND send
money to improve our bay’s health! Plastic bags remain one of the most
collected trash items in our cleanups and are deadly to many marine
animals that mistake them as food.”

ALO President Amy Williams
pointed out that the organization “has always been a strong supporter of
avoiding single-use items, especially plastic.”

The organization’s new
executive director, Kyle Gronostajski, is particularly interested in
pushing the issue of less reliance on carryout plastic bags (as well as
single-use water bottles and other disposable items). He hopes to raise
awareness of the environmental hazards of disposable plastic bags, and
to perhaps even get Island stores on board with a ban.

“We live in a very
ecologically sensitive coastal area,” Gronostajski noted. He says
residents and visitors should understand the problem with plastic bags,
and cease using them, instead taking reusable bags to the store.

As he also noted, while
Ocean County has informed residents to keep plastic bags out of curbside
recycling containers since first accepting mixed recyclable materials
in 2010 – as the bags hamper single stream sorting efficiency and can
damage the processing equipment – the machinery at the county’s
recycling center in Lakewood jams consistently because residents
continue to throw these bags in with their recyclables.

This, said Gronostajski, is just one more reason, of many reasons, to steer clear of plastic bags.

Imagine a future where endless balls of plastic bags aren't
jammed underneath the kitchen sink, where the idea of a "plastic bag
holder" is as quaint as a CD rack, and where that famous scene in "American Beauty" prompts children to ask their parents about the bygone days of plastic bag pollution.

For Hawaii, such a future is just around the corner. All four of the
populated counties in Hawaii have passed legislation banning plastic
bags at checkout counters, making it the first state in the country to
pass such a ban. (There is a fifth county, Kalawao County, in Hawaii,
but it is very remote and barely populated.) On the Big Island, where
consumers have been paying for plastic bags at checkout lines for the
past year, the ban officially begins on Jan. 17 at grocery stores, restaurants and retailers.

Consumers can opt for paper bags or bring their own, reusable bags.
Plastic bags will still be available for bulk items such as nuts, fish,
meat, grains, and fresh produce.

The islands of Kauai and Maui already enforce such a ban, with the
most populated island, Oahu, set to join them in July of 2015.

According to the Surfrider Foundation, Hawaii's success came from its local, grassroots movements. The state-wide ban, they note, "was not done by the state legislature, but instead by all four County Councils."

The Foundation also notes that the plastic bag ban is only the first step: if the state enacted a fee for paper bags, it would further reduce the use of disposable products.

CHEBOYGAN
— David Martin, member of the Straits Area Concerned Citizens for Peace
and Justice, has started a local petition to ban plastic grocery bags
in Cheboygan and is hoping to gain for support for the cause.

"I've
always been interested in the environment since high school, and to me
things are just getting worse," said Martin. "My goal is to take the
petitions in front of the city council around Earth Day. It seems to be a
time where more people are concerned about the environment."

Although
Martin is taking the lead role and doing the "leg work" with the
petition, he said his mother, Karen Martin, did a lot of research on the
threat that plastic grocery bags pose to the Earth.

Martin
said that the state of Hawaii passed a ban on plastic grocery bags that
went into effect in January, and that more and more municipalities in
the United States have either banned the bags or levy taxes on them,
including San Francisco, Los Angeles County, Portland, Washington D.C.,
Seattle and more.

"While ringing the bell for
the Salvation Army this Christmas, I saw how many people were carrying
plastic bags. It disturbed me," explained Martin.

Eight
million pounds of plastic, including bags, are dumped in the ocean each
year, according to Martin, creating an island of plastic twice the size
of Texas in the Pacific Ocean. The "plastic island" is 300 feet deep in
some places. The plastic kills numerous species of fish, mammals and
birds, he said.

Plastic bags are made from
polyethylene, a thermoplastic made from oil. The bags photo degrade over
time and break down into smaller, more toxic petro-polymers, which
eventually contaminate soils and waterways, and the microscopic
particles can enter the food chain, Martin explained. He said that the
typical customer uses the bags for 30 minutes from store to home to the
trash can. In the trash heap or ocean, the particles last for centuries.

Martin urges people to switch to reusable bags instead of the plastic
grocery bags. The bags are bad from the start, he said, taking millions
of gallons of oil to make them with the remnants of the bags lasting far
beyond our lifetime.

Martin hopes to get to
local businesses as soon as possible to solicit signatures for the
petition. He can also be contacted at (231) 818-6806. Concerned citizens
can also sign a worldwide petition at www.Care2.com.

The Straits Area Concerned Citizens for Peace and Justice is a group
that seeks to promote the peaceful and just resolution of conflict using
nonviolent means through educational programming, informing community
leaders, and holding vigils.

Thursday, January 9, 2014

LONG BEACH, CA – Captain Charles Moore, the man who discovered
the swirling vortex of plastic trash widely known as the “Great Pacific
Garbage Patch,” will once again sail to one of the most polluted areas
of the world-the North Pacific Central Gyre. Moore and the Algalita
Marine Research Institute have assembled a highly qualified team of
scientists who will live amid the debris for 30 days and study the
region beginning in July. The ultimate goal is to evaluate long-term
trends and changes in the Gyre by merging data collected over the past
15 years with new 2014 data.

The persistence and increasing quantity of plastic debris, including
new arrivals from the Japanese tsunami, have created artificial habitats
in the North Pacific Gyre-essentially building “plastic reefs” where
sea creatures have made their homes. How have the marine ecosystems
impacted the area since Algalita’s first expedition 15 years ago? What
have they done to the various species that live there? How are toxic
contaminants from plastic transferred to marine life, and what are the
consequences for human health?

Algalita’s researchers will investigate the area to find answers.
This voyage will result in new and repeat monitoring data needed to make
scientific conclusions about the scope and effects of plastic marine
pollution.

Since 1999, Algalita has conducted eight research expeditions and
produced the longest running data set for the region. The organization,
which has participated in similar expeditions in the North and South
Atlantic Gyres, South Pacific Gyre, Indian Ocean Gyre and in Antarctic
waters, was the first to develop a standard methodology for sampling and
analyzing micro-plastic debris from the ocean.

The expedition will also launch the latest live Ship-2-Shore<http://www.algalita.org/ship2shore/> educational program, which uses satellite communications systems to connect students with researchers at sea.

The Algalita Marine Research Institute is a nonprofit organization
committed to solving the plastic pollution crisis in our oceans. In
1997, our founder, Captain Charles Moore discovered an area of plastic
debris in the North Pacific Ocean known by many as the ‘Great Pacific
Garbage Patch.’ Since then, the Long Beach, CA-based organization has
been studying the devastating impact of plastic on our oceans and
educating the public. To date, Algalita has collected and analyzed more
than 1,114 plastic debris samples from five oceans. The organization
reaches thousands of students worldwide every year. For more
information, please visit www.algalita.org .

Sunday, January 5, 2014

At only six years old, Ryan is
already a great advocate for a healthy ocean. Why is this six-year-old
an ocean hero? You won't believe how hard Ryan has already worked to
protect the ocean—from bringing reusable bags to the grocery store to
making sure you recycle your aluminum cans. Watch Ryan's video and learn
what you can do to make a difference.

The animals Ryan and all
of us love, face threats from man-made pollution every day. As Ryan
says, he's scared that one day when he looks out at the bright blue
water, no one will be looking back. Ryan says we need to act right now,
and he's right.

Of the many new laws making their debut today the one that will
be felt by nearly everyone is the ban on single use plastic bags within
the city of Los Angeles, making all of L.A. County a bag-free zone.

Unless that bag contains this newspaper.

Or broccoli.

Or the sandwich bag your dealer sells your stash in.

At
Ralphs or the corner bodega, you can fill your cart to the brim with
boxes of plastic bags; giant black yard bags with pull strings and tiny
thin trash can liners, but when you get to the checkout stand you can’t
get a plastic bag for your plastic bags.

Nuclear weapons and AR-15s are still legal but plastic bags are verboten.

It’s not the end of the world.

The
wife and I live on the edge of Los Angeles and do most of our shopping
in stores long subjected to the county ban on bags. I grumbled and
adjusted. So will you.

The question is should we be forced by law to do so?

Not
that long ago “One for the road” was a way of life in America and every
year we lost north of 50,000 on our roads, many to boozed-up drivers.

Along came MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and attitudes changed.

“One for the road” wasn’t so cool anymore. The three-martini
lunch became the zero-martini lunch. Laws were toughened and enforcement
tightened. We still lose thousands to drunk drivers, but not nearly as
many as before.

Not that long ago “Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em,” was a common cry. We smoked ourselves to death.

For
40 years Americans have been warned and lectured about the dangers of
smoking. We’ve banned smoking practically everywhere and jacked up the
price per pack to astronomical levels through punitive taxes, making
smokers in California almost as rare as Republicans.

Unless you smoke pot. Somehow pot is still cool.

Like cigarettes used to be.

We
are burying ourselves in our own filth and I’d like to believe we’re
smarter than that. We’re also burying freedom under an avalanche of
legislation and I’d like to believe we love liberty too much to
surrender it out of laziness.

Recycling was once patriotic.

During
World War II every man, woman and child happily recycled tin cans,
paper, nylon, anything necessary to help beat Hitler and Tojo.

It
took 80 tons of scrap metal to make one tank. What we couldn’t get
through recycling we saved though rationing; butter, fat, gas, oil,
grease, sugar were all proscribed by law. Willingly and not so willingly
we changed the way we lived for a cause greater than ourselves.

We need to do the same today.

The hundreds of tons of
plastics dumped into the ocean each year is a genuine threat to our
health and the health of the planet. This isn’t eco-propaganda, although
there’s plenty of that floating around as well. The reality of plastics
poisoning the ocean is as real as a tax audit.

But first let’s clear up some nonsense.

We’ve
all heard about the trash island in the Pacific the size of Texas? Not
true. It’s much worse. There are actually five of them around the globe
and they’re more like trash soup than trash islands. They’re called
“gyres,” enormous spirals of partially decomposed shopping bags, milk
containers, wrappers and the million other things we use once and toss
away without a second thought.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

We can voluntarily change
our behavior because it makes sense, the way we once recycled to beat
Hitler, or we can do nothing and wait until the government mandates
change by law.

While L.A.’s plastic bag ban reeks of political
feel-goodism, the kind of eco-friendly legislation that’s catnip to
politicians, it’s at least something.

If we want to keep
government from reaching into yet another aspect of our lives, and I do,
we need to once again make recycling a patriotic duty. We need to
prosecute the slobs who toss trash out their car windows under existing
laws.

But let’s not kid ourselves; doing nothing is not an option. The
oceans are becoming giant vats of toxic PCBs. Now is the time for all
good Earthlings to come to the aid of their planet.

Doug McIntyre’s column appears Sunday and Wednesday. He can be reached at: Doug@KABC.com.

Plastic pollution is likely to be much
worse than officially recognised, posing a threat to Australian species
and ecology, according to the latest study published in journal PLOS
ONE.

Each square kilometre of Australian sea surface water
is contaminated by around 4,000 pieces of tiny plastics, according to
researchers, Julia Reisser, Oceanographer and PhD candidate at the
University of Western Australia and Charitha Pattiaratchi, Winthrop
Professor of Coastal Oceanography at UWA.

These small plastic
fragments, mostly less than 5mm across, are loaded with pollutants that
can negatively affect several marine species, from tiny fish and
zooplankton to large turtles and whales.

Plastics can be
transported from populated areas to the marine environment by rivers,
wind, tides, rainwater, storm drains, sewage disposal, and flooding, or
can directly reach the sea from boats and offshore installations.

Throughout
their marine journey, plastics break down into increasingly smaller
pieces mostly due to the effect of sunlight and heat. These plastic
fragments, commonly called microplastics when smaller than 5mm,
represent the vast majority of human-made debris present at beaches,
seafloor, and in the water column.

Gyre ocean rubbish - .. .

The effects of plastics on food webs and ecosystems have become focus
of concern over the last decade. It is now known that over half of our
plastic objects contain at least one ingredient classified as hazardous.

To make matters worse, plastics that enter the oceans become increasingly toxic by adsorbing oily pollutants on their surface.

When plastic is ingested, these concentrated toxins can be delivered to animals and transferred up their food chains.

This
biomagnification of toxins is more likely to occur when plastics are
small enough to be ingested by low trophic fauna, such as small fish and
zooplankton.

These tiny ocean plastics may affect the health
of entire food webs, which include humans. For instance, little plastic
pieces were found in the stomach of some Southern Bluefin tuna captured
off Tasmania and destined for human consumption.

Until now,
plastic contamination in Australian waters was mostly inferred from
beach clean-up reports. There was no at-sea survey focused on sampling
plastic debris in waters around this country.

Researchers used a
net called Manta Net to catch floating plastics at the ocean surface.
Small fragments of hard plastic were the most common type, but soft
plastics, such as fragments of wrappers, and strings (mostly fishing
lines) were also common.

Oceanic gyres - .. .

Size and types of marine plastics collected around Australia. Examples of each plastic type are shown in the photos. These
plastics were mostly made of polyolefins (polyethylene and
polypropylene). These polymers account for 52% of our plastic production
and are typically used to make throwaway packaging. They are also used
for manufacturing fishing equipment such as crates, nets, ropes, and
lines.

Our overall mean sea surface plastic concentration was
4,256.4 plastic pieces per km2. This mean value is higher than those
reported for other regions, such as the Caribbean Sea (1,414 pieces per
km2) and Gulf of Maine (1,534 pieces per km2).

However, in the
subtropical gyres, plastics tend to accumulate due to converging ocean
currents, and mean plastic concentrations are higher: from 20,328 pieces
per km2 in the North Atlantic Gyre, to 334,271 pieces per km2 in the
North Pacific Gyre. The Mediterranean Sea is also a global hotspot for
plastics: it has around 116,000 plastics per km2.

Researchers
observed higher plastic concentrations close to major Australian cities
(Sydney, Brisbane) and industrial centres (Karratha) as well as in
remote areas where ocean currents converged (such as south-west
Tasmania).

These observations, along with our ocean current
modelling results, indicate that marine plastics reach Australian waters
from multiple sources: domestic and international populated areas, as
well as maritime operations.

Plastics, made mostly of oil and
gas, are cheaper than the natural materials they replace for the
manufacture of many objects, such as packaging and fishing gear.

As
a result, incentives to re-use or recycle every-day items have
decreased over the last few decades. Meanwhile plastic production has
increased from 1,700,00 tonnes in 1950 to 280,000,000 tonnes in 2011.

In
Australia, 1,476,690 tonnes of plastics were used in 2011-2012, of
which just 20.5% was recycled. Most of these plastics (around 37%) were
used for manufacturing single-use disposable packaging, including
plastic bottles, cups, and bags.

Marine plastic pollution is a
global issue caused by our massive production of plastic waste. The
solution for this recent environmental problem is not simple.

Authors
of the report believe there are three important steps. First, decrease
plastic waste: this could be achieved by reducing production of
single-use plastic packaging. Second, improve our plastic disposal
practices on land at an international level. And last, better enforce
the laws prohibiting dumping of plastics at sea.

About Me

My name is Melanie Cheney. I've been living and working on the Missouri River since about 2002 with a group called Missouri River Relief. Since then, the community and river have taught me much, and I've grown very passionate about reducing my "plastic" footprint. I have yet to become extreme about it (depending on who you ask), but I would like to continue to reduce the amount of single-use plastics we use in our everyday lives and help lessen the enormous impact plastic pollution is taking on our streams, rivers, oceans and its wildlife (including us!). I hope this blog will help!